Boxing -
Nearly 300,000 people gathered around their radios last week on July 2, 1921 in order to listen to BIGGEST fight of the year, or as Tex Richard would say “The Biggest Fight of the Century”. The American Reigning World Boxing Champion Jack Dempsey and the French Army Veteran Challenger Georges Carpentier starred in an outdoor heavyweight boxing championship built on a farm in Jersey City, New Jersey which gained “the largest audience in history.” Almost 80,000 fans came to witness this breathtaking event in person, which lead to the first ever million-dollar gate in boxing history. Not only was the simple match-up between Dempsey and Carpentier exciting for the crowd, but so was the radio broadcast! The broadcast was the first to ever attract a “mass audience”.
The fight was a classic representation of the conflicts between a “hero” and a “villian”. Although the fight was home in New Jersey, the frenchman Georges Carpentier was promoted as the hero by Tex Richard due to his experience as a pilot in World War I. On the other hand, Richard promoted the American Joe Dempsey as a “slacker” for supposedly avoiding the military draft. These fighters certainly earned a butt load of money as well! Joe Dempsey was offered $300,000 and Carpentier was offered $200,000 just for participating. Both fighters were also promised twenty five percent of the film profits before fighting! It was Rickard’s idea to allow the fight to be available on the radio. He had a makeshift wooden room for the radio broadcast to be built under the stands where the audience was seated. The Radio Corporation of America had telephone lines and a temporary radio transmitter installed at the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railway terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Although the fight did attract a notable audience over the radio, there was an even more impressive audience in the stands to witness the event in person. Industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller Jr., William H. Vanderbilt, George H. Gould, Joseph W. Harriman, Vincent Astor, and Henry Ford were seen there. Entertainers and literary figures such as Al Jolson, George M. Cohan, H.L. Mencken, Damon Runyon, Arthur Brisbane, Ring Lardner, and the 3 children of Theodore Roosevelt was claimed to be there as well. The exact recorded amount of money was accumulated by the audience was $1,626,580. The amount of money received at this moment in history was the first time a boxing event exceeded an a million-dollar amount.
During the fight, Dempsey defied the odds and dominated. Even the famous writer George Bernard Shaw publicly claimed that Dempsey had not chance of winning and that Carpentier was “the greatest boxer in the world”. At first, Carpentier, the “hero” was hitting Dempsey with some really hard blows, one of his blows was so hard that he was reported to have broken his thumb. But after beating up Dempsey for the first couple of rounds Carpentier started to suffer from fatigue; this is when Dempsey saw his chance! Dempsey hit Carpentier over and over again, he was beating him against the ropes and really giving Carpentier a beat-down. In Round 4, Dempsey finally hit Carpentier so hard until he could no longer could stand the ref counted to ten seconds. Dempsey had finally won the Greatest Boxing Match in History and he remained the reigning world champion!
-Natalie William
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